Review : Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
Pages : 264
Genre : YA
Stand alone
My Rating : 2/5
About the Book :
If life were fair, Jam Gallahue would still be at home in New Jersey with her sweet British boyfriend, Reeve Maxfield. She’d be watching old comedy sketches with him. She’d be kissing him in the library stacks.She certainly wouldn’t be at The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school in rural Vermont, living with a weird roommate, and signed up for an exclusive, mysterious class called Special Topics in English.
But life isn’t fair, and Reeve Maxfield is dead.
Until a journal-writing assignment leads Jam to Belzhar, where the untainted past is restored, and Jam can feel Reeve’s arms around her once again. But there are hidden truths on Jam’s path to reclaim her loss.
My Thoughts :
I don’t know how I feel about this book.
I don’t know!!!
I’m basically figuring it out as I am writing this thing.
I didn’t love it. I somewhat enjoyed it. And some of the things really rubbed me the wrong way.
First, the writing. It was fine. Nothing exceptional, a lot of telling and not enough showing, which means the characters and the action felt a little flat for me. I never formed any connection with the characters, not even Jam – which is quite disappointing since she was the narrator of the story. I also felt that it lacked subtlety, with every feeling or learned lesson explained precisely.
I also didn’t like how the book touched on mental illness. I’ve read a lot of YA books about grief, depression, and other conditions, but this one really didn’t get it. I think I could see what the author tried to do – especially with the twist – but for me, it didn’t work. The resolution was so easy and rushed, it felt disingenuous.
I guess I am hugely disappointed. I had big expectations, especially since I had heard a lot about Meg Wolitzer as a literary fiction author, AND because The Bell Jar, which is one of my top 10 books ever, is a big inspiration in Belzhar. But it didn’t even come close to portraying the shadow of the depth, emotion, and realism Sylvia Plath put in words.
There were a few positives : the idea was interesting, and the whole thing intrigued me enough that I didn’t put the book aside, even though I thought a lot about doing it.
It always saddens me to write a negative review, which is why I don’t do them much. Hopefully other readers will get more from the book than I did.
On the plus side : now I really, really want to reread The Bell Jar.
